But the Great Being sent an attendant and had all the requisites for an ascetic brought to him, and had a barber to remove his hair and beard, and throwing his magnificent robe on a couch he cut off strips of dyed cloth, and putting on these yellow patches he fastened an earthen bowl on the top of his left shoulder and with a mendicant staff in his hand he paced backwards and forwards on the topmost storey, and then descending from the palace tower he stepped out into the street, but no one recognised him as he went. Then his seven hundred royal wives ascending the tower and not finding him, but seeing only the bundle of his adornments, came down and told the other sixteen thousand women, saying, "Mighty Sutasoma, your dear lord, has become an ascetic," and loudly lamenting they went out. At this moment [188] the people learned that he had become an ascetic, and the whole city was greatly stirred, and the people said, "They tell us, our king has become a monk," and they assembled at the palace door, and crying, "The king must be here or there," they ran to all the places frequented by him, and not finding the king they wandered to and fro, uttering their lament in these stanzas:

Here are his golden palace-towers
All hung with wreaths of scented flowers,
Where girt with many a lady fair
Our king would oftentimes repair.

Here wreathed with flowers and wrought of gold
His gabled-hall one may behold,
Where, all his kinsfolk by his side,
Our king would range in all his pride.

This is his garden bright with flowers
Through all the season's changing hours,
Where girt, &c.

His lake o'erspread with lotus blue,
Haunt of wild birds, here comes in view,
Where, all his kinsfolk, &c.

[190] Thus did the people utter lamentation in these various places, and then returning to the palace yard they repeated this stanza:

King Sutasoma, sad to tell,
Has left his throne for hermit cell,
And, clad in yellow, goes his way
Like some lone elephant astray.